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Why? What does that have to do with the NEW nuclear power builds, where this time the government is not liable for these things (the one exception being security for nuclear fuel in transit on the railways)?

But hey, gotta get those subsidies from the poor, leech. You're okay, jack.

So you brush 70 billion of UK taxpayer costs (hint: the poor will pay their share) under the carpet because they undermine your argument?

And thats even if you are naieve enough to think that the government will not continue to pay those costs for any new nuclear.

Typical for someone with your views to throw 70 billion of taxpayers money away and learn NOTHING from the lesson.

So you brush 70 billion of UK taxpayer costs (hint: the poor will pay their share) under the carpet because they undermine your argument?

And thats even if you are naieve enough to think that the government will not continue to pay those costs for any new nuclear.

Typical for someone with your views to throw 70 billion of taxpayers money away and learn NOTHING from the lesson.

Cliffski, infrastructural projects in the UK (part)funded by the exchequer seem to go overbudget with startling frequency - and usually massively. I notice that again and again you refuse to use anything but English examples.

The Humber Bridge went something like 340% overbudget in the 70s, using your ridiculous logic no bridges should ever have been built in the world again. Or something equally stupid.

The British Government is well known for optimism bias for when it comes to costing projects, so to use examples purely from your own inept government as a foundation for an argument on Nuclear Power in the US/Elsewhere is silly to say the least.

Cliffski, infrastructural projects in the UK (part)funded by the exchequer seem to go overbudget with startling frequency.

It's not even that.

The first-gen plants, like the other nuclear weapon powers, were designed to produce weapons-grade material as well as power. This costs a LOT.
The second-gen in the UK was a mistake born of basically screwing the heck up, believing the massively expensive AGR's were the future and not a dead end.
There's only one third-gen reactor, and it's economic even with being first-in-class. And the new plants are a commercial design which are NOT first-in-class. It's not even remotely parallel.

Cliffski is ignoring this, and where the new liability lies (with the companies), because it suits him. Even the Tories think he's wrong on this, however.

I notice that again and again you refuse to use anything but English examples.

The British Government is well known for optimism bias for when it comes to costing projects, so to use examples purely from your own inept government as a foundation for an argument on Nuclear Power in the US/Elsewhere is silly to say the least.

Dude, I'm english. I know a lot about english politics, and the situation in England. If I kept wafling about the US, americans would tell me I don't know what I'm talking about.
Feel free to build US nuclear plants. I don't care, they don't cost me a penny. I can only discuss and debate from my own experience and knowledge, what else would you expect?

Taxpayers will pick up most of the bill because the twin reactor plant, as well as 20 other reactors around the country, are state-owned

Also:

Under current plans, all the Sizewell spent fuel will be removed from the reactor by 2013.

Demolition of ancillary buildings will continue until 2034 when the site will be moth-balled in a “care and maintenance” phase – to allow radioactivity levels to subside. Final site clearance work is due to start in 2088 and last for 10 years.

At Bradwell, the “care and maintenance” stage is due to start in 2027, with final site clearance being achieved in 2093.

Cool! I assume you are factoring in the fact that the land taken up by a nuclear plant is useless for eighty years after power output has ceased? You may not know it, but wind turbines (even large ones) get erected in a day, as do solar panels, and can be removed in almost as short a timescale.
Just making sure you really *are* taking into account the true cost of nuclear.

It proved that the safety systems were less good than we thought, yes. But you are claiming Fukushima was a Chernobyl level disaster. Which is a lie.

The scale of disaster was of a different size but the Fukushima incident has been just as disastrous for the region and people living in it. Tens of thousands of families have been displaced to temporary housing. Contamination of ground around the plant has been recorded to upwards of 20km's from the reactors.

My wife and I have friends who live in Koriyama (about 50-60km's west of the nuke plant) and to this day it is still not safe for them to drink tap water or even allow their children to play outside on any exposed soil.

The major issue with having so many nuke plants is that Japan can ill afford disasters like this as it wipes out what little land they have available for what is an already over-crowded landmass especially in coastal areas. But their power usage is massive and without the plants the country would have insufficient power to supply their economy. It's a horrible catch-22 situation.

The scale of disaster was of a different size but the Fukushima incident has been just as disastrous for the region and people living in it. Tens of thousands of families have been displaced to temporary housing. Contamination of ground around the plant has been recorded to upwards of 20km's from the reactors.

My wife and I have friends who live in Koriyama (about 50-60km's west of the nuke plant) and to this day it is still not safe for them to drink tap water or even allow their children to play outside on any exposed soil.

The major issue with having so many nuke plants is that Japan can ill afford disasters like this as it wipes out what little land they have available for what is an already over-crowded landmass especially in coastal areas. But their power usage is massive and without the plants the country would have insufficient power to supply their economy. It's a horrible catch-22 situation.

Your friends have obviously been through a very frightening experience and I don't mean to be critical of them, but their belief that the tapwater is not safe does not appear to be gounded in fact. As far as I can tell government restrictions on the intake of tapwater in Koriyama-shi applied only to infants and lasted for 4 days.

It looks like there might be some significant external exposure, but a study of 25551 schoolchildren found that average exposure was about 33% over the limit and maximal exposure was ~4 times that (or less than 1 chest ray/year).

So yes, there has been an impact on Koriyama, but let's not exaggerate things.

Dude, I'm english. I know a lot about english politics, and the situation in England. If I kept wafling about the US, americans would tell me I don't know what I'm talking about.
Feel free to build US nuclear plants. I don't care, they don't cost me a penny. I can only discuss and debate from my own experience and knowledge, what else would you expect?

You don't have to be living in the US(or Russia, or France, or Germany, or Japan) to look up statistics, reports and studies on Nuclear energy in those countries.

Cool! I assume you are factoring in the fact that the land taken up by a nuclear plant is useless for eighty years after power output has ceased? You may not know it, but wind turbines (even large ones) get erected in a day, as do solar panels, and can be removed in almost as short a timescale.
Just making sure you really *are* taking into account the true cost of nuclear.

Cliffski, do you understand the basic problem that nuclear plants solve that wind and sun can't? You obviously understand that solar power is only available when it is sunny, and wind power when it is windy, right? So what do we do when it's not sunny and not windy? The only "always on" choices we have right now is fossil fuels or nuclear. Whatever the cost of solar and wind, it can't be on all the time so if we don't have a nuclear option we are pumping out massive amounts of CO2. That's it.

You obviously understand that solar power is only available when it is sunny, and wind power when it is windy, right? So what do we do when it's not sunny and not windy? The only "always on" choices we have right now is fossil fuels or nuclear. Whatever the cost of solar and wind, it can't be on all the time so if we don't have a nuclear option we are pumping out massive amounts of CO2. That's it.

Originally Posted by Timex

And therein lies the dirty secret that the advocates don't want to talk about... basically NO ONE is even pretending like these sources can provide base load power production.

W've already discussed this and I may have even already posted links in this thread, so I'll just note that the idea that this is a 'dirty secret' that everyone is pretending doesn't exist is wrong. People think about this stuff a lot. Here's an example. Note the 'base load' discussion in particular.

This is for the US. I don't know about the UK but I expect you'd have to consider Europe as a whole to get a good comparison since the US has to much more landmass and numbers may be drastically different in Europe for all I know.

And in any case it doesn't matter what people think is cheapest or best or anything. The goal is to setup a good system and power grid and let it become as efficiently as possible. I support a modest loan guarantee program in the US for nuclear, and I hope we build some EPRs so we don't have all our eggs in the AP1000. But the scale of nuclear subsidies is overboard.

The only way to achieve base load needs with sources like wind or solar is to create massive storage mechanisms. Such things can be done, but they are either inefficient and costly (huge battery stores), or take up large amounts of space (big raised resevoirs that you pump water into, and release to power generators when the main source isn't creating power).

The larger issue is that in order to store power, that means that you need to be creating way more power than you need when the power is "on". So, when the sun is shining, you don't just need enough panels to power everyone's houses while the sun is shining.. you need all of that, plus enough panels to capture enough power to store, so that it can be used when the sun's down. Based on current numbers, this translates into more than doubling the capacity requirements for those energy technologies, not to mention the additional costs associated with the storage mechanism.

This ends up making these technologies extremely impractical, at least as they exist currently, for base load power production.

And therein lies the dirty secret that the advocates don't want to talk about... basically NO ONE is even pretending like these sources can provide base load power production. Even the most ambitious of the plans for those sources essentially are just using them as minor supplementary sources of power, with coal as the primary fuel source.

With Lynch's example of the crazy town idea of Europe outsourcing its power production to Africa (which, by the way, has to rank up there in the "worst ideas ever" list... It's like charging a psychotic homeless person with holding your housekeys for you while you're at work), they're talking about a TARGET of producing less than 20% of their power through the vast solar array, by the year 2050.

So, the most ambitious plan ever involves not even reaching a fifth of the required power, and they won't reach that extremely low bar until nearly forty years in the future?

If you don't believe in AGW, then this plan might be fine for you. But if you accept that humanity needs to reduce its greenhouse gas output, then this plan is absolute insanity.

In contrast, in less than 10 years, you could retool the energy infrastructure to be powered primarily by nuclear. If you go further and replace fossil fuel powered ground transportation, which we have the technology to do now, with electric powered vehicles, then you will effectively eliminate all major sources of carbon emissions into the atmosphere.

So, in less than 10 years, nuclear provides an answer to carbon emissions.

Alternative energy sources, even four decades in the future, still require massive use of fossil fuels.

But if you accept that humanity needs to reduce its greenhouse gas output, then this plan is absolute insanity.

In contrast, in less than 10 years, you could retool the energy infrastructure to be powered primarily by nuclear.

If I accept this the the RIGHT way to solve it is to tax the F out of emissions so that output falls as low as necessary. Not to have the government pick the winning technology and bet everything on it. A 10 year plan would be absurd, btw, check the numbers on that. Optimistically we'll get 20 new plants in the next 10 years.

If emissions are taxed highly and companies believe nuclear can compete, they will snatch up any dangling loan guarantees and even start building them without them.

See my post above for a more general response to the claims in your post.

the crazy town idea of Europe outsourcing its power production to Africa (which, by the way, has to rank up there in the "worst ideas ever" list... It's like charging a psychotic homeless person with holding your housekeys for you while you're at work)

With Lynch's example of the crazy town idea of Europe outsourcing its power production to Africa (which, by the way, has to rank up there in the "worst ideas ever" list... It's like charging a psychotic homeless person with holding your housekeys for you while you're at work), they're talking about a TARGET of producing less than 20% of their power through the vast solar array, by the year 2050.

It's being seriously discussed, it's not crazy. Some countries would be reliable enough to do it, some wouldn't. Africa isn't a big undifferentiated mass of clusterfuck.

W've already discussed this and I may have even already posted links in this thread, so I'll just note that the idea that this is a 'dirty secret' that everyone is pretending doesn't exist is wrong. People think about this stuff a lot. Here's an example. Note the 'base load' discussion in particular.

I'm sure some people think about it a lot. But also some people don't think about it at all.

That post you linked to was interesting, but it demands a very large geographic area to be feasible. I'd also like to see how economical such an idea would be, because I suspect you'd need a massive amount of redundancy in order to assure continuous power. The cost of building all that extra capacity "just in case the weather goes wrong" sounds like it would be extremely expensive. While your poster poo-poos "always on" power, because he seems to get disconnected once a week, I've grown use to my electricity never going down. A black-out event is for me a once a decade affair.

But more than anything I'd be extremely dubious about making my country's electricity grid dependent on the weather. The climate is changing. That's why we care about CO2 in the first place. What if the wind stops blowing in one place, and clouds cover another. What if something even more drastic happened, like Krakatoa blows up and you have 50% of your energy network devoted to solar power while sulphur clouds block out the sun. I wouldn't want something as vital as the energy grid dependent so much on the whims of nature.

I think the only real answer to that is tidal power and, like Timex said, large scale storage. But how many decades is that away from feasibility?

We need a "stepping stone" to get to clean, always-on power and it's either nuclear or fossil fuels.

So why do we need to 'pick' nuclear or agree about any of the cost particulars? I think nuclear won't compete against the ramp of solar and wind in cost. Others think otherwise.

The problem is emissions so tax the emissions to whatever rate we want.

Hell, even coal is a long shot player given a breakthrough in sequestration tech.

You're not addressing the fact that nuclear can meet real-world demand where solar and wind can't. It's entirely accurate to say that right now and for the next few decades, the only choice for the majority of power generation is nuclear or fossil, as has been stated several times.

While your poster poo-poos "always on" power, because he seems to get disconnected once a week, I've grown use to my electricity never going down. A black-out event is for me a once a decade affair.

That's a feature of any power market. Uptime is better than downtime and people pay more for better service.

There are multiple ways to increase power uptime. Different power sources, grid setups, capacity overbuilding, generators, giant lazer space batteries, whatever. The ideal distribution is not going to be one particular thing, it's going to be a mix of solutions that naturally emerge from market needs and ameliorate the problem as much as people think it's worth to pay.

We could give every building a million dollar battery setup to increase uptime. Really bad idea. We could pick a particular nuclear power plant and subsidize it ridiculously. Really bad idea. We don't need to pick anything ahead of time here.

It's being seriously discussed, it's not crazy. Some countries would be reliable enough to do it, some wouldn't. Africa isn't a big undifferentiated mass of clusterfuck.

A huge portion of the region where those solar arrays would go has undergone major revolutions as recently as six months ago!

Sorry, but that is not the type of place where I would want to be counting on to get my electricity every day.

Regardless, the actual point of statement wasn't that it's a crazy town idea... because, hey, maybe you think it's great. That's cool.

But it still only proposes to generate less than one fifth of Europe's power via those renewable sources, after development for forty years.

Thus, even that extremely ambitious plan for use of solar power, does not even make a dent in the carbon issue. You're still going to be burning massive amounts of coal... even half a century from now.

The scale of disaster was of a different size but the Fukushima incident has been just as disastrous for the region and people living in it. Tens of thousands of families have been displaced to temporary housing. Contamination of ground around the plant has been recorded to upwards of 20km's from the reactors.

Bahahahaha lolwhat.

No. The Fukushima incident has been not nearly as disastrous for the region and people living in it. They're alive, unlike the people who lived near Chernobyl.

American taxpayers already reimburse nuclear power developers for legal and regulatory delays. A unique law caps liability for accidents at a present value only one-third that of BP’s $20 billion trust fund for oil-spill costs; any bigger damages fall on citizens. Yet the competitive risks facing new reactors are uninsured, high, and escalating.